The other speaker, a slightly smaller spawn, retreated down the corridor.

  “Oh no,” Dhamon warned. “You’re not going to get help or sound an alarm.” He sped behind it, feet slapping against the damp stone floor, then he thrust out the sword, skewering the spawn in the back where its wings joined. The creature cried out, turned and lunged, but Dhamon was faster, dropping beneath its outstretched claws and bringing the sword up to slice deep into its abdomen.

  The spawn shuddered and then dissolved in a burst of acid, just as Dhamon leaped back.

  The sivak edged into the next corridor behind Dhamon, holding the torch out. There were other torches here, guttering fat-soaked ones hanging from iron holders spaced evenly along the walls.

  These torches gave off scent and heat and illuminated a ghastly site. Dhamon had entered a hallway lined with cells that were crowded with both emaciated prisoners and rotting corpses.

  “By the Dark Queen’s heads, where are we?” Dhamon breathed.

  The sivak cautiously moved up. “Dungeons are found throughout Sable’s swamps. Some are Sable’s. Some belong to humans who believe they hold some measure of power here. Though horrid, these cells offer us good news—surely we will find stairs and a way to the surface now.” Dhamon sheathed his sword and tested the bars of the closest cell, finding them too sturdy for even his considerable strength.

  “You can’t think to free these people. Look at them.”

  Indeed, Dhamon looked closer. None of those in the first several cells would live beyond the next few days. They’d been either starved nearly to death or beaten so severely that moving them would only hasten their demise. Despite that, he tried the bars one more time.

  “You’re no hero,” the draconian told him. “Why are you bothering?” I used to be, Dhamon thought. I used to be Goldmoon’s champion, and I used to care about things beyond myself. Aloud, he said. “What could they possibly have done to deserve this?” The sivak offered no answer.

  Dhamon hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to retreat back through the hidden passage and take the other fork, the one where he could smell nothing. A trace of a familiar voice stopped him.

  He hurried farther down the corridor, again drawing the sword.

  “Dhamon? Dhamon Grimwulf?”

  “Aye,” he said, standing in front of another cell and peering between the bars. “Why does • my life seem so intertwined with yours?”

  Beyond were a dozen more prisoners and an equal number of dead. Among the prisoners were Rig and Fiona.

  “Aye, Rig. It’s me.”

  They looked beaten, and not just physically. There was no life left in their eyes. Fiona’s skin looked as pale as parchment. Rig had lost a considerable amount of weight, and his clothes hung on him.

  “You’ve got a sivak…!”

  “Time for answers later,” Dhamon said, as he passed the sword to the sivak. He braced himself, gripped the bars of the door, and pulled. Despite his strength, the bars did not budge. He tried to bend the most rusted bars, throwing all his effort into it, muscles bunching, jaw clenching. The veins on his neck and arms stood out like thick cords. When the bars did not yield to his first attempt, Dhamon strained harder. Finally he was rewarded with the groan of metal.

  “Dhamon,” growled the sivak. “you are not a hero. Think of yourself.”

  “Maybe I’ve been doing a little too much of that lately.”

  “Listen,” Ragh continued. “Do you hear—”

  “Aye, I can hear them. More spawn’re coming,” Dhamon returned.

  “Or draconians,” the sivak said. “You’d best hurry. Free them quickly or let’s move on.” Dhamon took a deep breath and forced the bars again. The effort caused motes of white to dance behind his closed eyes. The metal moved just enough. Prisoners slipped through into the corridor.

  Dhamon spun on the draconian and grabbed his sword, looking past the people and down both ways of the corridor.

  “Hurry,” Dhamon urged them. “We’re going to have company very soon.” Rig helped Fiona out. She was so weak he half-carried her.

  “Thanks,” Rig muttered. “I never thought I’d be so glad to see you again. I thought we were going to die in there.”

  “We still might die,” the sivak shot back. “Look.” He gestured with a claw down the corridor, then brushed by the mariner and Fiona to stand shoulder to shoulder with Dhamon.

  “You might want to be a hero,” Ragh told Dhamon through clenched teeth. “All I want is the naga. I don’t want this.”

  A particularly large spawn had spotted the entourage and was charging down the corridor, webbed feet slapping against the damp stone. Holding his sword like a lance, Dhamon rushed to meet the spawn. Carried forward by its momentum and stupidity, it was unable to stop in time and impaled itself. Dhamon backed up quickly, bumping into Fiona and Rig and avoiding the burst of acid.

  “I didn’t think I ever wanted to see you again,” the Solamnic Knight said to Dhamon, “but somehow I knew you’d come here to help us.” She gave him a slight smile.

  There was the sound of a rainwater barrel crashing over and another burst of acid, signaling another dead spawn, courtesy of Ragh.

  “Dhamon, how did you find us?” Rig asked. “How did you know we’d been captured?” The mariner’s overly large clothes were in tatters, torn by what were probably the claws of the spawn.

  His skin bubbled from acid scars. He had a deep gash on his forearm, and on his neck was a thick ropey scar that glistened pink in the torchlight. Fiona seemed wan and small without her plate mail.

  Her face was scarred on the left side. Both of them were breathing raggedly. “How’d you even know we were here?” the mariner persisted.

  “I wasn’t looking for you,” Dhamon said finally. “I didn’t know you’d been captured. Frankly, I don’t care how you came here. I was here looking for… something.” He waved them along the corridor, eyes flitting down alcoves hoping to find stairs. They passed into a large open area. There were no torches here, though there were elaborate empty sconces.

  “Rig, grab a torch from back in the hall, will you?”

  The mariner was quick to comply and passed out a few more torches to the freed prisoners.

  “Looking for what?”

  A narrowed look told the mariner not to ask again.

  “Trappers caught us,” Fiona said. “We saw their campfire after we’d left you and Maldred at the silver mine. It looked like they were only trapping animals.”

  “The four-legged kind,” Rig interjected.

  “We relaxed our guard, and they took us. They captured others on the way here. I think we’ve been down here for… I don’t know how long. Weeks. A month or more. We had no idea what they were going to do to us. If you hadn’t come along and…”

  “They would have let you die, from the looks of it,” the draconian said, eyeing the pair of them and the other freed prisoners who were scrambling alongside them. “Or turned you into spawn when your wills were completely broken.”

  Rig worked to keep up with Dhamon. “There are prisoners everywhere down here. You and I, we can free them and—”

  “You and I,” Dhamon said tersely, “can get out of here with our skins intact. We can’t free the town, Rig. You’re loose only because I’d lost my way down here. Maldred’s somewhere in the city above.

  I’ve got to reach him, and then he and I will be leaving this place very far behind.” The mariner’s eyes grew wide. “All these people, Dhamon.”

  “I sympathize,” Dhamon said. “I feel for them. I’m not so entirely heartless that I’m not affected by this.” He sped up his pace, the others behind him hurrying to keep up. “But I won’t risk my life saving theirs.”

  “The draconian,” Rig said after another hundred yards had passed. “What’s that about?”

  “Revenge,” Dhamon replied. “Ragh is about revenge.”

  They fell silent as they made their way down one corridor and up the next, sometimes passing cages that contained prisoners, and sometimes passing by cages that contained rotting corpses and skeletons that had been picked clean by rats. At one cell the bars were so rusted that Dhamon gave them a quick yank, and they broke, spilling forth a half-dozen men who could barely walk. They clung to each other and to the walls for support, mumbling their disbelieving thanks.

  “What about the others?” one man demanded. “The other cells.”

  “Fiona and I will be back for them,” Rig said. “When we’ve weapons and armor and Solamnic Knights.”

  Dhamon passed by two other cells, the bars of which were more rust than iron. These, too, he tugged open, then continued on his way without a word.

  The freed prisoners, nearly thirty now, were a diverse lot. Some were obviously knights—of Solamnia and the Legion of Steel by the ragged tabards they wore. Others, by their sun-weathered skin and calloused hands, looked like farmers or fishermen. They ranged in age from men barely out of boyhood to in their late fifties. The youngest and fittest said they had been told they were to be made into spawn soon. They stank of sweat and urine, and many had festering sores that were in need of attention. A couple of men, who looked so fit it was obvious they had not been held long, carried an injured comrade between them.

  Equal numbers of men were left behind because they were dying or too injured to walk or because Dhamon made no effort to tug at the bars. Rig made it clear as he passed that he would do all in his power to come back for as many as he could.

  The odors were intense, especially to Dhamon’s acute senses, and he fought to keep from retching.

  “Move faster,” he said to no one in particular. “Move or be left behind to rot here.” They reached a corridor that dead-ended, and Rig was about to motion the entourage to turn around when Dhamon stopped him.

  “There’s an air current here.”

  Dhamon felt the bricks. He pressed two of them, and the wall swung open. He and Ragh quickly slipped into the corridor beyond, the others following.

  “We’re going to have company again,” Dhamon told the sivak. His sharp hearing told him so. Up ahead were the faint sibilant hisses of spawn. There were only two, and in a few moments they were puddles of acid on the floor.

  The next tunnel they took was dry and musty. The ceiling was filled with spider webs that were brushed aside by the sivak’s head. They followed it for the better part of an hour as it wove and doubled back. They passed countless magical torches set in sculpted sconces.

  “I can’t be sure of the direction any longer,” Dhamon told the sivak, “but it feels as if we’re traveling north. And…” There was a hint of fresh air reaching Dhamon. It was coming from a crevice in the wall. He quickly squeezed through, motioning the others to follow.

  Several minutes later, they entered a moss-lined cave. The few torches the men carried didn’t shed enough light to reach to all the walls, but the light one man held showed another crevice, this one wider and filled with steps going up. Without a word, Dhamon led them, listening closely, hoping to hear what might lie ahead and instead picking up only the slapping of feet against the steps behind him.

  Dhamon found a lone spawn at the top. He rushed forward, swinging before it could react. Two quick blows finished it, acid spraying into a cell full of corpses. Now they entered another corridor, this one easily twenty feet across. More cells opened off it, though all but the one filled with corpses were empty.

  “Move.”

  Dhamon headed past the cells and through a door he spotted at the end, rushing up another flight of the steps, pausing only long enough to make sure the others were following. He came to another dead end, but the cracks in the bricks were easy to spot, now that he knew what to look for. He listened before pressing them, hearing nothing beyond. The wall swivelled open onto another twisting passage, one barely three feet wide. He rushed through, calling for the others to keep up.

  They continued to travel the tunnels for nearly an hour before they found themselves in a corridor covered with small glossy black scales—just like the trees had been in the spawn’s village. Dhamon reached a hand up to touch them. They felt sleek, as if they belonged to something alive.

  “In the name of the Maelstrom,” Rig whispered.

  Dhamon increased his pace. The tunnel rose and doubled back, dipped sharply, then rose again.

  “Stairs,” he said, letting out a breath of relief. These were wooden and stretched up to reveal the night sky. “We’re out.”

  The freed prisoners gained energy with his words, and within minutes they were all up the stairs and standing in the ruins of what might have been a temple in decades past. Stars winked down.

  “Ragh, just where in this damned city are we?”

  The sivak poked his head out from behind a crumbling column to get his bearings. “Not far from the market. I suspect we’ve been going in circles.”

  “So tired,” Fiona whispered to Rig. “My legs.” She was leaning against him, hair plastered from sweat against the sides of her face.

  Dhamon stepped out onto the street. The city looked different at night, when the darkness hid much of its ugliness. He saw no one out and guessed by the position of the stars it was well past midnight.

  Dawn was only a few hours away. He crossed the road and started down a wood sidewalk, stopping when he spotted something familiar—the dwarven merchant’s. The marketplace was only a few blocks away, and near it the inn where he could find Maldred.

  He hurried back to the sivak and the others, and, rubbing his hands on his pants, he addressed the freed prisoners.

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” he began. “We’re near the center of town. I suggest all of you leave, climb the rise, and keep going until you run out of swamp.”

  “I know the safest way out.” This from a grizzled, middle-aged man. “I was a guard here, before I fell out of favor. To the east is a path no one watches.” Dhamon nodded.

  “Take it, them, and everyone else with you. Rig, Fiona, you go, too. You’re not in any condition to follow me. I’ve Maldred to find, and then I’m leaving, too.”

  “Even if saving us was an accident, I’m grateful for it.” The mariner extended his hand, and Dhamon shook it.

  Dhamon moved away, the sivak on his heels, running where the shadows were thickest, heading toward the ramshackle inn past the marketplace. The freed prisoners mirrored their course, though not moving as quickly and taking the other side of the street. Dhamon watched the grizzled man lead them.

  Just as the marketplace came into view, Dhamon saw the man lead them down a side street to the east. Overhead Dhamon heard the flap of wings, and glanced up to see a spawn flying overhead.

  Against the stars he saw other shapes, spawn or draconians patrolling the city.

  “The inn,” Ragh announced, stopping at the end of the sidewalk and pointing beyond the market’s collection of cages. A few lights burned in the lowest windows. There were a few lights elsewhere, too, but not near the number Dhamon expected for a town of this size.

  He started toward the inn but stopped at the line of cages. The hair prickled on the back of his neck.

  “Something’s not right,” Dhamon whispered.

  “In this town,” the sivak whispered back, “nothing is right.”

  “No. There’s more to it than that.” Dhamon scanned the cages. A few of the creatures were sleeping, curled tightly in their close confines. Some were awake. The gold-flecked eyes of the huge owl were wide and watchful. The manticores were awake, too, the larger looking Dhamon’s way. Two spawn patrolled the market—on this side. Dhamon suspected there were more.

  “Something. Maybe something is watching us, maybe…”

  His words trailed off when he heard a high-pitched wail. It was coming from the direction the freed prisoners had gone.

  A glance skyward. The spawn and draconians were out of sight. He still heard the flap of wings, however, and the sound of pounding feet and desperate shouts.

  “The men you freed have been discovered,” the sivak said. “We had best hide or we will be hunted, too.”

  Dhamon didn’t budge, still watching the side-street the slaves had slipped down. He caught a glimpse of a skinny, barely dressed man, one of the last he’d released from the cells. Rig and Fiona were just in front of him, the mariner shouting for everyone to stay together. Fiona called to them to look about for anything they could use as weapons. Though there was only little light from the stars and from a few windows, Dhamon could see the panic on Fiona’s face.

  “We have to hide,” the sivak said louder. He gave Dhamon a poke with a claw for emphasis.

  Behind and above the freed men were a dozen spawn and sivak draconians.

  “They’ll be butchered,” Dhamon breathed.

  “Yes, and we will too, if we don’t—”

  Dhamon unsheathed his sword. Rather than running toward Rig and Fiona, he hurried to the marketplace cages, meeting the charge of the two spawn guards he’d seen. The sivak followed several paces behind him, demanding he come to his senses.

  “You’re no good to me dead!” Ragh snapped. “You can’t help me against Nura Bint-Drax if they catch you.”

  Dhamon threw his strength behind a sideways sweep of his blade, practically cutting the first spawn in half. He continued on to the second target as the first dissolved in a burst of acid. Two swings this time before the spawn went down, neither creature quick enough to land a blow against Dhamon.

  He rushed to the pens, raising the sword high over his head and bringing it down on the chain that held the nearest door closed. The metal link parted from the blow, and Dhamon sheathed the sword, fingers fumbling to tug the chain free, then arms bunching to tug open the massive door. A second later, an angry six-legged lizard the size of an elephant trundled out.

  It was followed by other grotesqueries that Dhamon freed, using his strength to pull at the cage doors now, rather than risk breaking his only weapon.

  “What are you doing?” the sivak cried. “Have you gone mad?”